Columbia University president Lee Bollinger recently published an interesting and rather controversial article in the Wall Street Journal proposing a creation of an “American World Service that can compete with BBC and other global broadcasters.”

Bollinger argues that the presence of the Internet caused an “economic decline” in the print and broadcast media industry. He says what is needed is a publicly funded media organization not unlike PBS and NPR. He proposes a system revision that will consolidate the resources of these two organizations to develop a “globally competitive” media institution.

Bollinger himself noted the primary criticism of publicly funded (that's controlled by the government, making it state-funded) media organizations – government influence. Then he offers a very exemplary solution: we must trust the media institutions that they will still be the watchdog-slash-fourth branch of government even if their fund comes from the state. Outrageous.

Media organizations simply can’t receive funding from the government and maintain their status as ‘autonomous’ and ‘independent’. Nobody would buy that.

Bollinger is right in pointing out that with the Internet, the tri-media (TV, radio, print) is seriously deteriorating. Yet, I do not believe that the decline of the traditional journalism translates to deprivation of essential information. With the Internet, journalists have a venue where they can tackle pertinent issues in depth – one thing that can’t be done in traditional media because of space and airtime considerations.

From my perspective, Bollinger’s proposal is not just an attempt to salvage the traditional American journalism. I feel like it’s also an attempt of the United States to re-capture the global media domination currently held by BBC. This is a personal concern. What will happen to the currently-in-question foreign policy of the United States when a state funded American media institution dominates the global media industry?